Accent that betrayed: An Afghan'sfailed masquerade as a Bihari
Lucknow: The bustling departure terminal of Lucknow's Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport was alive with the usual hum of travellers. Among them stood Jandullah Dad Mohammad, a 33-year-old man from Afghanistan's rugged Paktika Province, clutching an Indian passport under the alias Rehan of Patna.
His destination was Sharjah, his demeanour calm—until his accent betrayed him, unravelling a tale of forged identities, illicit travel, and a life lived in the shadows.
It was just past 7 pm on Monday when Jandullah, dressed in nondescript travel attire, approached the immigration observation counter for IndiGo flight 6E1423 to Sharjah. His documents were impeccable: an Indian passport, Aadhaar card, PAN card, Voter ID, driving licence, SBI bank passbook, and even a ration card, all bearing the name Rehan, son of Kabir, from Kotwali, Patna.
He carried US $1,600, 3,000 UAE Dirham, ₹21,000, a UAE visa, hotel bookings, and three mobile phones, including a gleaming iPhone 16 Pro.
To the untrained eye, he was a Bihari heading abroad for work or leisure.
But something felt off to the junior immigration officer scanning his profile. The documents aligned, yet Jandullah's presence didn't. His face, his mannerisms, his story—they didn't quite match the dossier of a Patna native.
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The officer, trained to spot discrepancies, leaned in for a routine verbal check. "Aap Patna ke hain? Kahaan se hain wahan? (Are you from Patna? Where in Patna?)" he asked casually, probing for details about Rehan's supposed hometown.
Jandullah responded, but his words carried an unfamiliar cadence. The lilt of Magadhi, the dialect spoken across Bihar's heartland, was absent. His Hindi was stilted, tinged with a foreign inflection that didn't belong to the Gangetic plains.
"He claimed to be from Patna but couldn't answer basic questions about the city. His tone was all wrong," the officer later told colleagues.
After signalling for backup, the officer had Jandullah quietly escorted to a holding room for further questioning. The suspicion turned to certainty when a background check revealed his Afghan passport and expired medical visa hidden in his bag.
Authorities learned Jandullah had entered India in December 2019 on a six-day medical visa but vanished after landing in Delhi.
By 2020, he'd acquired a full suite of fake IDs, likely through a Patna-based document racket. The revelation has stunned the immigration team.
It's important to note that Paktika is a volatile region bordering Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Known for its rugged Toba Kakar Range and proximity to terrorrist strongholds, it's a place where survival often trumps legality. Jandullah's journey from there to Lucknow's airport was a puzzle authorities were now desperate to piece together.
On Thursday afternoon, the Sarojini Nagar police in Lucknow had lodged an FIR against Jandullah, based on the written complaint of immigration sleuth, charging Afghan national under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for cheating, impersonation, forgery, using forged documents, and violations of the Passport Act (section 12) and Foreigners Act (section 14B). The charges painted a picture of a calculated crime: Entering India on a medical visa, overstaying illegally, and building a false identity to move freely, perhaps toward a larger scheme.
Presented before a magistrate, Jandullah was remanded to judicial custody, his Sharjah dreams grounded.
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